


Where Is My Wife?

by Double_Moth



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9441209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Double_Moth/pseuds/Double_Moth
Summary: Truth is often stranger than fiction, if one can merely divine the difference.





	

I have had odd happenings plague me all my life. Sometimes eerie and quickly forgotten, sometimes horrifying things that stayed with me all my years. I have always felt like things follow me. Find me. As if I act as a beacon that they cannot resist or avoid.  


Many of the most intense experiences happened when I was very young, in a small house in a quiet neighborhood. The house was both perfect and unnerving. The backyard was my favorite place, and the house had just enough room for my mother and our cats. Being an only child, and rather moody when it came to social interaction, I had to entertain myself more often than not. And in the way that children do, I found the simplest things fascinating. Certain areas of the house had a certain pull to them, an energy that was hard to describe or pin down. The closets felt as if they went on forever, always oddly dark even with the lights on. And sometimes I felt the oddest energy rising from the hardwood floors. Cold air, sometimes hot air, sometimes the smell of cooking food or strong perfume.  


I once had an older friend tell me that the house was a portal, a way-stop, a place where things passed through. And the more I thought on it, the more it made sense. Every phenomenon, and there were many, only happened once or twice, and then stopped altogether. Things would fall over, float off of tables, cabinets would open, doors would slam. But never more than once. As if whatever had caused them had moved on. At first I thought it was interesting, even cool, living in a place so filled with energy, with the unexplained. But I believe now that my interest was what set me up for attack.  


By lending a hand to the unknown, by offering a friendly ear, I invited them. I allowed the door to open. And they came.  


First shadows, then voices in my ear like the hiss of something otherworldly and malevolent. Then solid forms blocking the light standing at the foot of my bed. Unexplained bruises, night terrors, things falling from shelves and walls with enough force to shatter them.  


I had always been a nervous child, even before living in that house. Plagued by nightmares, or convinced that our house would be broken into. I never slept well. If I wasn't lying awake, I was waking up at odd hours of the night, usually around three, feeling as if the air around me were alive and prickling. The increase in activity did not fare well for my disposition. It became even harder for me to sleep alone.  


My mother was an understanding, patient woman. When I crawled into bed with her, which was very often, trembling and on the verge of tears, she never turned me away. But so as not to disturb her, I set up a palette on the floor next to her bed. Simply being near was enough to help me sleep. But it was not long before the house seemed to catch on. Whatever phantasms lived within those walls would not let me rest.  


It was a night like any other. I couldn't sleep. My CD player, which I usually used to drown out the creepy sounds of the house settling, had run its battery dry, and all I could do was lay awake and pray that sleep would come. To my surprise, it wasn't that long before I started to drift off. The house was quieter than I expected. The air was still. I felt as if I had been given a reprieve, and I was thankful for it.  


But I was resting in the eye of the storm. Rather than being woken by a nightmare, or a noise, I simply opened my eyes. No discernible reason, or cause. I was simply, suddenly, wide awake. I looked up at my mother's alarm clock. 03:27.  


The air was alive. Even as the house sat still, there was a heavy inevitability in the atmosphere. Something was going to happen. I knew it. What had started as the vagueness of awakening became full blown anxiety. All I could do was sit and wait.  


From where I was laying, I could see into the hallway. The bathroom door was open. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, it was filled with light. Not only the soft glow of the light-bulb, but with an opaque, almost blinding light. With that light came a shadow reaching through, as the figure of a man stumbled out of the door and into the hallway.  


My heart lept into my throat.  


The man was bleeding, though it was hard to tell where from. It formed trails down his face, across his forehead. He looked dazed, shaken. Upset and confused.  


Then his eyes found me, and he headed toward the bedroom door.  


He looked hopeful.  


I crawled as far against the wall as space would allow, terrified beyond anything I had ever felt before. He stumbled into the door, and leaned against the door-frame, his head peering in. And then I saw where the blood trailed from. The back of his head was missing. Exposed brain and shattered skull, all red and angry. Bleeding and spraying as if he were still breathing.  


I wanted to vomit. His eyes bore into me, like a wounded animal.  


“Where is my wife?”  


His voice was soft, polite. But filled with such heaviness, as if the world hung on his question.  


“Have you seen her? I need to find her. She's not safe.”  


I shook. My mouth would not move. My voice was broken.  


“Where is my wife?” He sounded more desperate, his voice tearful and thick.  


Somewhere amidst the terror, I found the strength to speak.  


“I don't know. I don't know where she is. I don't know who you are.”  


“Where is she? She's not safe. I need to find her...” His voice trailed now, one hand cradling his mutilated head. In all my fright, I felt pity. This pathetic creature. Hurt and wandering. But there was nothing I could do. He was so frightening, so hideously injured, and I was so small, so scared...  


“I don't know, sir. I don't know where she is.”  


“Where is my-”  


“I DON'T KNOW! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”  


The entire house groaned. It was the only noise. The silence was absolute. With that shout, he seemed convinced. But I have never seen anyone look so sad, so lost. He turned his gaze away from me, the gaping hole in his head wide and weeping. His eyes turned down, dejected. Crestfallen. Even with the terror coursing through every inch of me, I felt as if I had failed him. He let his hand linger in the door-frame just a moment longer, and then let it slide away as he began to fade. A thick trail of blood lingered where his hand had once been, but began to evaporate as soon as he left the doorway, as if the house was absorbing it. He wandered back into the eerie white light of the bathroom. And then he was gone.  


The house was still once again.  


I trembled, my eyes wide in shock, staring at the doorway, now as clean and white as before, and empty as could be. There would be no sleep that night.

I find it strange that my mother never woke. Despite my shouting. It was as if the world had stopped to let that poor man into my house. As if he had crossed an endless void to speak to me, and in the end, I could not help him. In the end, I was just a child. And he was just a sad man separated from someone he loved. Even being young, I wondered what had happened to take that man from this earth. What had happened to make him search, to make him linger? And what chose me to be the one who saw him?  


Strange activities continued in the house. Some terrifying in their own right. But never so harrowing and heartbreaking as that one man. Eventually, we could no longer afford that strange house, and we moved out. How odd and empty it looked without things in it. Even with all the fear it had caused me, I still wish I could have stayed. It seemed so sad to see me go. For every horror, there was light. And for every sadness, there was joy. And the old memory of that poor man who I could not help.  


Sometimes I pass by that old house. It's different now. The bushes have been trimmed, one of my climbing trees cut down. An older couple lives there, I believe...But it's still just as perfect and haunting as it was so many years ago. Like a lighthouse made quiet by years of neglect, but still as strong as the day it was built. I often wonder what would happen if I went back. Of course it's impossible, barring making myself look like a lunatic, or breaking the law. But I do find myself thinking about that man. Would he still be there? Where did he go? Did he wander somewhere safe, or did he linger somewhere and get lost? And above all, did he find her? The woman who he sought as he wandered into my bedroom, so desperate for help that he sought it from a child?

Where is my wife?


End file.
